The Nation Channels Insanity on the Left, and Donald Trump Smiles
The Nation has officially gone off the deep end with yesterday’s editorial screed against Joe Biden. This is insane. That any progressive entity could see the full-scale immolation of American democracy that Donald Trump is perpetrating and focus its energy on the supposed evils of Joe Biden boggles the mind. But it is becoming alarmingly typical of what the far-Left seems to want these days.
Personally, I come not to praise Joe Biden per se, nor to bury him – I haven’t decided for whom to vote. But I would vote for literally any Democrat in the primary race today if I thought it gave the best chance of defeating Donald Trump.
This is a moment of national emergency. Defeating Trump isn’t everything…it’s the only thing. A full recitation of his crimes, outrages, and insanities is unnecessary (though here is one if you want it) — to pick merely the worst, he conspires with our enemies to attack us, and then extorts our friends to kneecap their ability to defend themselves. A second term would cause multi-generational damage to our country, our system of government, and the working families that the Left claims as its cause.
Donald Trump has left our country and system of government bleeding out on the table. The Nation’s solution is to refuse to treat the patient unless they choose the doctor.
The particulars of their case are…strange. They float the baffling notion – especially in light of the Trump track record – that it was actually the Obama administration that was a boon to Wall Street and corporate lobbyists (this will be news to the folks at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the banks who still rail against Dodd-Frank, and the lobbyists benefiting from Donald Trump’s ripping up Obama-era lobbyist rules). They single out Biden for expressing doubts about Medicare for All despite widespread opposition from Democrats, including that noted right-wing zealot Nancy Pelosi. They intimate that African American support for Joe Biden is somehow a boost to white nationalism, and suggest that black voters would be better off if he dropped out…apparently, they feel that African Americans should only favor candidates of color and need to select from a list that The Nation has pre-approved. They conclude that they know for a fact that Joe Biden is not “best positioned to beat Donald Trump” despite this week’s New York Times/ Siena College poll that suggested the opposite and has the whole political world buzzing.
It is tempting to let this one outlet simply shake its fist at clouds, but this is not just one outlet, and it is not a small matter: this is a revealing glimpse at the underlying desire from a small but loud faction to wage a progressive-on-progressive war. And it drags all progressives down. Much in the way that Donald Trump behaves as a Russian asset, The Nation is behaving as a Trump asset. There is a mountain of evidence that over the last 25 years, Republicans have moved significantly to the right, while Democrats as a whole have shifted very little to the left. The way that Republicans have been able to even the playing field is to muddy the waters, claiming that Democrats are moving just as radically to the left (Mitch McConnell: “the energy in the Democratic Party is self-avowed socialists, open borders... I think the Democrats are going hard left”). McConnell and Trump are calling the tune, and now The Nation is beating the drum for them.
Confusion, dissension, and anger among Democrats (and an attempted takedown of Joe Biden…hmmm, where have we heard that recently) — ask yourself, who benefits from that?
It is tempting to offer a specific defense of Biden’s record. I won’t. This isn’t about him. Suffice it to say that his is mostly admirable, albeit with mistakes, regrets, and admitted points of evolution – as is true of all politicians, such as Elizabeth Warren (who I also admire) being a former “die-hard conservative” and Bernie Sanders having a very mixed record on guns.
The point is that just about any Democrat in the primary would deliver most of what Democrats want, and stop most of what they hate. Democrats, and many Republicans for that matter, who recognize the fundamental threat of Trump have to make common cause, not dissipate themselves lambasting candidates who have mostly the same positions and values. As Benjamin Franklin said, we must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.
To The Nation and its fans: we clearly don’t agree here. But at the end of the day we’re on the same team. We have to be. Let’s keep our eyes on the real goal here.
